Tuesday, September 3, 2019

Reading Room WEIRD TALES OF THE FUTURE "Ten Thousand Years Old!"

Here's the "pilot" for an ongoing comic series that never came about...
..but did see publication in Key's Weird Tales of the Future #1 (1952)!
It's an interesting premise, and the publishers even gave the story the coveted cover slot...
Art by Ross Andru and ?
...yet next issue, Jerry and Jill were nowhere to be found!
So, what happened?
With a cool (if somewhat implausible) story by an uncredited scripter and pencils (and possible inks) by Ross Andru, it seemed like the sort of ongoing feature that could anchor a title.
Was a second story commissioned?
We'll never know...

Monday, September 2, 2019

Holiday Reading Room EVERY DAY'S A HOLLY DAY "Labor Day"

It's ironic anti-Union/pro-"Right to Work" Don the Con tweeted this...
...on a day meant to celebrate unions!
Why is this 1955 comic entitled "Every Day's a Holly Day" instead of "Every Day's a Holiday"?
Because it was given away to kids by grocers who sold Holly Sugar!
Illustrated by John Rosenberger, it's a unique pamphlet covering a number of American holidays, including both Lincoln and Washington's Birthdays (before they were combined into "Presidents' Day" in 1962), Mothers' Day (though not Fathers' Day), Flag Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and a couple of holidays we've largely abandoned...Pan-American Day and American Indian Day!
We'll be presenting the other chapters on the dates they fall upon.
Watch for them!
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Sunday, September 1, 2019

Design of the Week SPACE ACE!

Each week, we post a limited-edition design, to be sold for exactly 7 days!
This Week...

Before Don Bluth appropriated the name for his video game, there were a couple of totally different Space Aces in the Golden Age of Comics!
This particular one was a Flash Gordon-type set in the then-distant future year of 2000, complete with one-man spacecraft, moving sidewalks, flying cars, mile-high skyscrapers, human colonies on other worlds, etc.! (You remember all that stuff, don't you?)
And, of course, aliens!
LOTS of aliens!

One of the interesting things about this image is that it doesn't feature a scantily-clad woman being held captive by the tentacled alien, making it particularly age-appropriate (but still retro-kool) for under-10 year-old kids' (pre-K / 4th Grade) back-to-school stuff!
Enjoy!

Saturday, August 31, 2019

Reading Room MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN COMICS "Doorway to the Future!"

Is this a "lost" Kirby Klassic from the 1950s?
Read this never-reprinted tale from Monster of Frankenstein #33 (1954) and judge for yourself...
When Prize Comics' Monster of Frankenstein title was revived during the horror comic boom of the early 1950s, besides a wonderfully-gruesome version of Dick Briefer's Monster, it featured a number of two to four page "fillers".
Most of these tales appear to be, at the very least, laid-out by Jack Kirby.
This story is a prime example.
The figure poses, faces, machinery, even the futuristic buildings all but scream "KIRBY"!
The Grand Comics Database lists the story's artist as Marvin Stein with a "?", but considering the volume of work Simon & Kirby did for Prize before leaving to form their own company, Mainline, and the fact Stein worked primarily for their studio, it's not unlikely this was an "inventory" story meant for insertion wherever editorial material pagecount came up short.
Sadly, the writer of the story is, as in so many cases, unknown, but it might also be Kirby...

Friday, August 30, 2019

Friday Fun SPACE MOUSE "Hunter"

The Dreaded Deadline Doom caught up with us this week...
...so we're re-presenting the first Space Mouse story we ran last year, right after a slew of Martian related posts celebrating the 80th Anniversary of Orson Welles' 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast, which explains the following caption...
Thought the Martian invasion stuff was over for the year?
Guess again, Earthling!
Even funny animals battled Martians!
Not a Dream!
Not a Hoax!
Not an Imaginary Story!
(though it is the ending of the movie Invaders from Mars, which came out the year before this never-reprinted tale from Avon's Space Comics #4 [1954] appeared!)
If I were a cynical sort, I'd say writer/artist Frank Carin copped that finale...
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(covering the studio where Frank Carin got his start)